Customs process started

This is Cassie accidentally blogging in Graeme's name. After a fairly frustrating day yesterday going back and forth to the Silver Wind office, we were determined that today would be more productive on the customs front. We got up early, went downstairs to get breakfast and there was a massive line up as the restaurant was an hour late opening up and still wasn't open by the time we got there. So, off we trotted towards the Silver Wind office. On the way we bought me some cough medicine to try and shake this damn cold. I had a great sleep last night, and I am getting better.

We then bought some croissants, juice and bananas for breakfast at a grocery store next door to the Silver Wind office, along with some clothes washing detergent. (Hmmm I must get to washing some clothes in our hand basin at some point today - not really looking forward to that!) The only place to sit and have our breakfast was on a stone wall along the pavement. So we perched ourselves up there and this guy came over to us and started speaking to us in Russian. Don't know if we were doing something wrong because that's the second time someone has come up to us and had "words" to us for sitting on a wall. There's nowhere to sit to have a rest so what are we meant to do? Anyway, once we smiled at him and said some random stuff in English he smiled and walked away. Yesterday we were approached by an upset old Russian lady who kept talking Russian AT us even though we were speaking English to her, she then promptly started having "words" with the dog that was barking at her. She was just generally crazy and cranky I think.

Our breakfast on the wall and washing detergent

We walked upstairs to the Silver Wind office where we waited for Irina to get our paperwork together. Then we were whisked away by car with Irina to the insurance office to organise our compulsory insurance in order to begin the customs clearance process. It has been confirmed that our container has been unloaded from the ship and this process is ready to start. They don't place much emphasis on seat belts here and my seat belt was missing the bolt that attaches it to the car. The driver of a car often doesn't wear a seat belt. I've been very well conditioned to wear one so was very cautious and hanging on through the organised chaos that is Vlad traffic.


The guy at the insurance office was very efficient and Graeme pointed out he kind of looked like Tom Hanks. He did in a round faced kind of way! He was getting frustrated that we didn't have a "technician report" to say the car is road worthy. We do have the original rego document from Australia and we tried to explain that the car has to have an annual inspection in order to get that piece of paper, so yes, this piece of paper says the car is safe to drive. Rarrr! Not good enough. Funnily enough, when Graeme stuck the new rego sticker on the windscreen before the car got shipped, he stuck the other one to the new rego paper. I pulled that off so the rego paper was clearer to see and the guy jumped up and got very excited at seeing our rego sticker! He was saying in Russian, yes yes this is what I need! Ok, so get excited over a sticker that has the exact same info that is on the rego form you just rejected. Cool with me. We then explained there's also one of those stickers on the car windscreen and he was very happy. So, after finding a bank and having difficulty getting rubles because their ATMs weren't working properly, we went back, paid our fee and then set off to the customs brokers office.

This is the car owned by the insurance guy. He was very proud of it!

One of four broken ATMs at the bank

Thanks to Brett or David, whichever one of you went to our home and picked up the pink slip for the car and emailed it to us. Champions! We're super appreciative.

Customs was fine too. They translated the contents of the car which was a slightly humorous process. Thankfully with the help of Alexey who speaks a bit of English, and good ol' Google, we were able to explain and look up pictures of what was on the form. It was funny because as soon as they saw the picture there was a big "Oh yeah, gotchya" moment going on in Russian. The 3 of them then started discussing something entirely in Russian and I asked them, are you discussing how crazy you think we are for doing this? *laugh laugh* yes they sure were! Caught ya guys! I may not speak much Russian but it doesn't mean I don't entirely know what they're saying. Weird I know, but you get the gist of conversations if you really pay attention.

Alexey at the customs office - notice the pictures of Maxtrax on the screen -  we definitely had to explain those via a picture on Google images!

The only piece of paper we didn't have for customs was the original registration paper for our stay in Russia. We asked the hotel for it when we checked in and they didn't want to give it to us. We needed it for customs clearance so Alexey drove us back to our hotel from his office (the seat belt click things for the rear seats had never been used because they were absolutely buried under the seats but, determined that we both have seat belts this time round, I dug and dug around until I found them!). Alexey and Irina then came in with us and pretty much said to the very annoyed and reluctant hotel staff, just hand the documents over. Then that was that. Irina from the Silver Wind office was with us the whole time and was very good at trying to explain things to us. We are so very grateful to her and to Alexey, the customs broker. We seriously couldn't have done this process without their kindness and help. And there's more to come, so hopefully the rest goes just as smoothly.

We've been glued to our hotel room this afternoon in case one of them calls needing something else from us. But it's been a few hours now, so I think we're about to venture out and see if we can find a road atlas and other provisions we need for the trip.